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decrease'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'
- Oscar Wilde.
I have a vague memory of waking up some time later with a tongue like Ghandi’s flip-flop. After gulping down a bottle of water from the fridge I decided, in the manner of eccentric drunkards, to make myself a cup of tea. After sculling it back fast enough to strip buds of my tongue I coughed, retched and flopped back into bed.
I awake a second time to the low, murmured sound of 10 million people scratching their arses stumbling towards the shower. The sun has slashed through a gap in the curtains and painted a luminescent go-faster stripe across myself and the still dead-to-the-world Noy. I feel as sick as a fucking dog and I can’t open one eye. I roll over in a bid to regain unconsciousness but my mouth starts watering and an uncomfortable sweat breaks out across my forehead and down my spine. My mind refuses to focus on any thought, concept or notion for more than half a second and I can feel my eyes involuntarily darting around behind my closed lids. I’m going to throw up. The realistion that there’s no way around my predicament prompts me to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and make a desperate, zigzagging bid for the bathroom. I slam through the partially open door and hunch over the toilet just in time for the show to start.
“Uuuuaaaaak,” I inform the toilet. Oddly, nothing happens.
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaak!” I insist, but without any product or relief.
“Wha? What's the fuckin story?” I rage impotently at the porcelain. “This is bullshit!”
“Uuuuuug,” I add finally, which prompts something as far as my throat where it lodges firmly.
Panic rises as I instinctively clamp my hands around my throat and, inexplicably, run towards the sink and turn on the cold tap. To my horror, neither endeavour succeeds in extricating the thing from my kneck. It just won’t shift. After some time flailing helplessly around the bathroom, breaking various fittings and bumping into things, the corners of my vision start to blacken. I decide, in a moment of clarity, to ram myself backwards into the bathroom wall in a last desperate attempt to dislodge the mystery item. By the grace of the good Lord the impact sends the yoke hurtling from my mouth and across the bathroom.
“Wha in the name of fukin…”, I gasp. “Wha the fuck is that?”
I approach the article the devil sent to take me, which has come to rest beside the bathroom door, with extreme caution. I sample a cry, then try on a laugh for size but neither reaction seems suitable. I opt, finally, for a blank-faced shake of the head. It’s a teabag. I was so hammered last night that I swallowed a teabag without noticing.
I stand up, straighten out my naked frame and rest my hands on my hips. As I do so I notice a bout of giggles escaping from the bed.
“Hey, ting tong!” says Noy, as I turn to look at her adorably sleepy face.
“What happen you? Why you talk-talk with toilet?” she continues, stifling another laugh.
“In the last week I’ve managed to con €100,000 from some of the most dangerous terrorists in the western world without being killed,” I rasp through my aching throat. “And just now I’ve nearly been put in the ground by a fuckin teabag.”
My near-death experience has left me wheezing and sweat-soaked so I hop into the shower to sort myself out. When I re-emerge, musing to myself about the confused Catholic modesty that has compelled me to put a towel around my waist, Noy is sitting in bed flicking through the TV channels with tussled hair and a blank face. Her mouth is slightly open.
“So do you want to see it then?” I say, with a joker-like grin.
“What is it?” Noy answers before fixing me with a curious stare.
“The money!”
“You really have?” she says, her mouth opening a fraction further.
“Ahh. Yee of little faith. But yeah, it’s in the safe,” I add, before nodding towards the wardrobe with the sort of icy fucking cool nonchalance that would have earned a slap had I been in company of another Irish male.
A hint of a smile cuts across Noy’s face and as her bunched fists involuntarily pull the sheets towards her chin, she looks oddly child-like.
I punch the code into the panel on the front of the safe and wrench out the silver plastic bag. As I get to my feet I can’t stop myself from peeping inside to make sure the contents are still what they should be. It fucked up the I’m-so-cool-I-shit-ice-cubes show I was putting on somewhat, but I couldn’t abide even the slightest risk of bringing about a scenario in which I found myself emptying the bag onto the bed in front of Noy with a ‘Weeee aaaarreeee riiiiich!’ only to see chopped up newspapers tumble onto the linen.
Noy, who for perfectly understandable reasons ,which includes her complete lack of knowledge regarding who in the fuck the Real IRA are, had felt I was full of shit when I banged on about an elaborate, fantastically dangerous money-making scheme I’d brought to fruition. She was however, rapidly changing her mind as I approached the bed. After pausing briefly to soak up her reaction I spilled the bag’s confirmed contents at her feet, wondering as I did so who would play me in the inevitable Hollywood blockbuster about my life story. Colin Farrell, probably. Maybe Leonardo Di Caprio if he can pull of the accent.
“Well?” I ask, entirely incapable of stopping myself from grinning like an idiot. “You believe me now?”
Noy gingerly rested one small hand on the pile of gold-coloured €50 bundles as if she might be burned by the experience.
“Is real?” she asks solemnly.
“Is real.”
“How mutt?”
“100,000.”
“You mean, is same-same 100,000 Baht?”
“Ha! No love, I mean 100,000 in Euros.”
“Oh. So how much in Baht?”
“Around five…. around five million I think.”
Totally blind-siding me, Noy covers her hands with her face and begins to weep. After a moment her hands slide down an inch or two to reveal her big watery peepers, which fix on me as if I’m some sort of fucking deity. She hoists herself up and walks across the bed on her knees before throwing her arms around my kneck. Apart from the odd sob, sniffle and upward glance, she remains still and silent for the next 15 minutes. I’m elated. Well, at first anyway. By the time the quarter hour mark rolls around I’m kinda bored.
“Okaaay…” I say. “That’s more than enough of that.”
I break the embrace and kiss one of her wet cheeks. “Stick the kettle on there will ya? I’m dyin for a cuppa tea.”
To be continued (hang in there lads, it's nearly finished).
© Rob Carry. All rights reserved by the author.
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